I open this week's blog entry with the theme music from the tv show the Bill playing in my head. I hate webpages that open with music, however if you want to play along with me - click here to listen to the Bill theme. Saturday morning, I stumbled home after a night out where I drank far too much wine. Most of Saturday morning was spent catching up on sleep, passed out on my bed in my bathrobe, packet of pain killers next to my bed and an icepack on my head. As I'm trying to sleep I hear "ksssht" noise of a police radio outside. This is quite normal where I live. Sirens are always going off. Even the sound of gunfire is beginning to not phase me (but still scares me a little). So in my hungover trying to sleep state, I ignore the police and their radios outside. Steph comes upstairs to my room and says "Manda, there's a man in our garden". We both look out my bedroom window. Sure enough there is a man huddled in the corner of our garden. Me and Steph look at him from our window. He looks at us. Steph and I look at each other. He says "ssssh, I'm hiding". He looks about 16 or 18 years old. The cogs in my head slowly start to turn. My brain finally starts to function, and my brain says to me, "perhaps this is why there are police outside - they might be looking for this man". Steph tells him to get out of our garden. Brain and body decide to function together now. 
And I run outside to discover, not just the one policeman on patrol, but 3 police cars and a police van and cops everywhere. They look like they're about to give up, when all of a sudden, a crazy woman, looking like hell, dressed in a bathrobe (being ME), runs over to the police cars and says, "there's a strange man in our garden!". The police spring into action and say can we go through your house to get into your garden? I say yes, and before I know it, there's 6 or so police storming through our house. They get into our yard, jump our fence and capture our fugitive on the run. Steph and I watch them put him in the police van. One of the cops gives me a "well done" nod as all the police walk back to their cars. Well done me - the caped or robed crimefighter.Later that day I managed to make myself human and headed into London for some essential winter clothes: I now have leather knee high boots, 2 winter coats (one for work, one for more outdoorsy survival stuff). All I need now is some gloves, but they can wait a bit. Saturday night, I managed to haul myself to Putney to meet up with some girls. Although I was pretty useless. Had 2 drinks, got the bus home, and fells asleep literally as soon as my head hit the pillow and slept solidly for 10 hours straight.
Work is sending me up to Aberdeen next month for 3 days. I doubt there'll be much "site" seeing, as I'll be working the entire time, and it's in the middle of the week - but it's always good to get away and stay in a nice hotel! I'd been hoping to get up to Scotland before the end of the year (on a proper weekend away), but time is running out - it might be something I'll have to do early next year.
I've also booked a day trip to Bruges (in Brussells), to the Christmas markets. Apparently this is what proper Christmas is supposed to be like. Ice skating (although I'm really crap / scared of ice skating), snow, markets with all Christmassy stalls, singing, carols etc. It's meant to be gorgeous.
I also went to Greenwich the other weekend for a picnic with my friends Emma and Liz. We caught the DLR which is an above ground train - so you actually get to SEE stuff on the way (this is a novelty when you get the tube all the time). We all stood on that Greenwich Mean Time line. There's an observatory and stuff and all the history behind it. Lots of clocks and old timey stuff. It's really quite pretty up there. We even saw an old movie being filmed so there were all these actors walking around in period costumes (who most of which were on their mobile phones), horse drawn carriages etc. Here's all the Greenwich photos: www.amanda.com.au/uk/greenwich
I've just RSVPed for our work Christmas Party as well. It's being held in Hampshire Countryside and looks absolutely gorgeous. It's a black tie dinner dance, and every stays overnight (and it's free!). Woohoo.So I'll leave this week's blog entry there. The mornings are getting darker. The days are getting shorter. People tell me the sun eventually goes down at 3pm at it's worst.
But alas, I'll be back in the Aussie sunshine for 3 beautiful weeks before I know it...
